Faltering freedom The owners of Prudhomme's Lost Cajun Kitchen in central Pennsylvania, where folks "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them ... as a way to explain their frustrations," as President Obama once described it, had a bright idea a while back. To boost business on Sundays, they offered a 10 percent discount to anyone who showed up with a church bulletin. Sure enough, an atheist complained, and Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission members engaged in deep thought last summer over whether the church-bulletin discount was permissible under state law, which classifies eateries like Prudhomme's as a "public accommodation." The commission decreed the business-builder was OK, so long as the owners didn't deny the same discount to atheists who presented secular documents from groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which brought the action against Prudhomme's. In a nation that defined freedom rationally, diners who disdained religion would be free not to patronize restaurants like Prudhomme's, while the owners would be free to offer or withhold discounts as they see fit.

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